Mr. Spicer said President Trump had “pledged to reverse this overreach.” The Obama-era rules, Mr. Spicer said, were an example of “bureaucrats in Washington” placing restrictions on one kind of company — internet service suppliers — and “picking winners and losers.”" 'via Blog this'

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The 5G policy approach - Pan European Networks : Pan European Networks: "The EU net neutrality rules are technologically neutral, and the rules will also apply to internet access services offered over the future 5G networks. If network slices are used to optimise the traffic in the 5G network, this must be done in a way that is consistent with the principle of net neutrality.

Some use cases of 5G will qualify as specialised services – certain forms of M2M communications, for example. Presumably, network slices could facilitate the reasonable traffic management allowed under the Net Neutrality Regulation if they are applied solely to differentiate between the objectively different technical quality of service requirements (e.g. interactive versus bulk traffic).

The concern for civil society, however, is that network slices can also be used to create internet fast lanes with paid prioritisation for certain types of content, such as through vertical integration with specific online video streaming services.

In July 2016, European telecommunication companies presented a ‘5G Manifesto for timely deployment of 5G in Europe’, which was welcomed and published online by the European Commission.3 The 5G Manifesto describes network slicing as a way to accommodate vertical integration with industry business models, and highlights the danger of restrictive net neutrality rules in this context." 'via Blog this'

Zephyr Teachout: Supreme Court Pick Neil Gorsuch “Sides with Big Business, Big Donors & Big Bosses”: "You see this incredible concentration. A lot of that comes from Justice Scalia and other people in the Chicago school, the law and economics school, believing that we should gut antitrust and basically allow monopolists to gather power. And in these two antitrust opinions, Judge Gorsuch shows that he is really with the—with that Chicago school, and, in fact, suggested he might go even farther saying, “Well, one of the reasons people go into business is the capacity to get monopoly rent, so we don’t want to discourage people for going into business,” instead of understanding, as Justice Brandeis and the true lions of our democratic past understood, that antitrust law was really critical for challenging excessive concentrations of power." 'via Blog this'

Friday, March 10, 2017

Donald Trump's FCC Chairman Spreads More Alternative Facts About Net Neutrality | Free Press: "“Pai keeps repeating the utterly debunked claim that the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules are utility-style regulations that are hurting broadband deployment. This is false on the law and false on the facts. It ignores not just the actual language of the FCC order, which explicitly forbears from the bulk of Title II, but the actual impact that Title II reclassification has had on the market.

“Pai’s claim that Net Neutrality protections have created great uncertainty in the marketplace is a flat-out lie, as is his notion of flatlining investment by internet service providers. We long ago discredited these claims.

“Pai’s frequent charge that investment has declined is based on the claims made by one industry-paid analyst, who selectively edits the figures reported by some of these companies. But if you take account of the industry’s spending as a whole, you’ll see that broadband-industry investment was nearly 9 percent higher in the two years following the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order than it was in the two years prior." 'via Blog this'

The FCC’s first actions on the issue came under two Bush-era chairmen, but most Republicans have always been skeptical of the need for formal broadband non-discrimination rules. Ironically, that now puts them out of step with the industry. Though still opposing classification as a regulated common carrier and some of the FCC’s specific requirements, virtually every major broadband operator is on record endorsing what would have been considered strong net neutrality rules in 2004 or even 2008. They’ve lived with net neutrality requirements for the better part of four years now, and the sky hasn’t fallen.

Pai and his compatriots, however, believe that today’s rules need to go." 'via Blog this'

According to him, the telcos are losing more money through OTT calls than through SIM BOX fraud.
“In as much as Sim Boxing is illegal and we must all fight very hard to stop it, there is a much bigger issue with over the top calls generated through the internet media. So when you make a whatsapp call you are making the call through the internet and bypassing the traditional channel,” he said.

Pointing to some measures taken by some countries in the Middle East to stop OTT calls, Mr. Twum Asante suggested that all social media calls be redirected through the traditional channels like it is done in those countries.
“I think the regulator in our country can also do same. We have to protect the operator in this country because that is the only way government can generate enough revenue from the sector,” he noted.

An over-the-top (OTT) call is a service which allows individuals to make calls over the internet and bypasses traditional distribution." 'via Blog this'

It's never easy writing a digital strategy when staying in the EU to encourage skilled immigration and capital, and pushing fintech/blockchain 5 years ago, should have been your priorities. But the UK version published Wednesday contained so much retread from the magnificent and genuinely ground-breaking 1999 Cabinet Office ecommerce@its.best.uk that I felt obliged to retweet the 1999 version to see if anyone could see any top-level differences. They couldn't because there weren't - unless you count changing 3G to 5G?
But my biggest beef with the 'don't mention Brexit we're British' was not #digitalasanoun or #cybercybercyber. It was the first 2 sentences of Chapter 1 which repeat the "exploding Internet growth" incorrect meme that I rail against in the book: